Miriam Toews

"You're a small thing," Grandma writes, "and you must learn to fight." Swiv's Grandma, Elvira, has been fighting all her life. From her upbringing in a strict religious community, she has fought those who wanted to take away her joy, her independence, and her spirit. She has fought to make peace with her loved ones when they have chosen to leave her. And now, even as her health fails, Grandma is fighting for her family: for her daughter, partnerless...

Left alone with her sad, peculiar father, Nomi Nickel's days are spent piecing together why her mother and sister have disappeared and contemplating her inevitable career at Happy Family Farms, a chicken slaughterhouse on the outskirts of East Village, a town founded by Mennonites on the cold, flat plains of Manitoba, Canada. This darkly funny novel is the world according to Nomi, a bewildered and wry sixteen-year-old trapped in a town governed by...

"Meet the Troutmans. When Hattie's moody boyfriend dumps her in Paris, she returns home to find that her sister Min is in the psych ward again. Min's kids, Logan and Thebes, are fending for themselves by focusing on other things--Logan is infatuated with acerbic New York Times Magazine interviewer Deborah Solomon, for example, while Thebes has dyed her hair purple and is refining her hip-hop vernacular. Freaked out by the prospect of becoming a surrogate...

A man called Otto: Based on the comical and moving New York Times bestseller, it tells the story of Otto Anderson, a grumpy widower whose only joy comes from criticizing and judging his exasperated neighbors. When a lively young family moves in next door, he meets his match in quick-witted and very pregnant Marisol, leading to an unexpected friendship that will turn his world upside down. Women talking: The women of an insular, ultraconservative...